Ronan Vibert: Vibertology: Rowing with the Wind, Hugh Grant, Byron, Elizabeth Hurley
n. Rowing with the Wind
Movie released 1988
Ronan Vibert Content: approx 10.8% (98min film)
Character: Fletcher: long-suffering butler/manservant to Lord Byron 
Cast: Hugh Grant Byron, Valentine Pelka Shelley, Lizzy McInnery 
Mary Shelley, Liz Hurley Clair Clairmont, Jose Luis Gomez Polidori, 
Ronan Vibert FletcherDir: Gonzalo Suarez
Availablity: PAL deleted, impossible to find/NTSC deleted, plentiful on Ebay etc. 
@ $1.50-$8.50
Plot/Comments:

The old Byron/Shelley/Mary Shelley cooking up Frankenstein at Rousseau's birthplace chestnut. 
Frankenstein comes alive and kills everyone as a harbringer of Providence/Fate. 
Or something. Should be horrifying, dramatic, and tragic. It is, but in the worst sense -- a pretty awful art-costume drama, where the dramatic aspects are done largely through Speaking Loudly and Properly, and the tragedy and horror comes largely  from the acting and script.

Naturally, Ronan Vibert manages to outclass the competition through the skill known as Acting and the attribute known as Charisma. The only other watchable element (surprisingly, given the role) is Hugh Grant as Lord Byron. 
 
While he's certainly not the least bit magnetically brooding, and is arguably miscast, he gives a good turn as a charismatic, vain, self-important, dashing Byron. It's also worth watching for his highly amusing haircuts (big boyish bouffant followed by a very  Kevin-Bacon-in-Footloose-meets-David-Essex longer 'do' for older Byron) and very unexpected Ricardo Montablan rubber pectorals. 
Grant is the only other actor in this production with charisma. 
   Perhaps it's fitting that as the real-life relationship between Byron and Fletcher was very love-hate and piss-taking, the interaction between their characters in the film is more believable than that of the other actors.
     Valentine Pelka isn't so much bad, as just completely uninteresting (curiously enough, he turns up 5 years later in Vibert's episode of Cadfael, and the years have not been kind), Lizzy McInnery provides a very balsa-esque Mary Shelley, and Liz Hurley comes over as simultaneously nice but dreadful (although male friends were impressed with her ample female attributes). 

In fairness to these actors, the script is pretty bloody awful, but some of the delivery has to be heard to be believed. 
Back On the Black Hill
Next Queen of Hearts
VIBERTOGRAPHY
Typical Ronan character quote:
(when told by Byron that he can share his dog's mausoleum in the garden):
"Thank you my Lord. If I was certain that His Lordship would also end his days here, I would not mind at all...but I would not like to be here alone...with the dog".
                            Ronan content: 

In many ways this is a textbook Ronan Vibert performance in that an otherwise small and irrelevant part is imbued with a lot of depth, managing to convey his relationship with the other characters, largely via non-verbal means -- something that none of the other actors in this film manage, despite lots of Big (but wooden) Declamation-style Acting.
Trainspotter comments and Queries:
 
  • Need the 128 min version of the movie: please email me at <vibertology@hotmail.com>for a trade
  • For the true Ronan Vibert trainspotter there's a line towards the end where he manages to make the question of the humidity of the weapons in the cellar sound very interesting.    There's a slip in the RADA voice training/accent coming through there.
  • Also, he's much blonder in this film than in any other appearances, and looks quite different facially (i.e. heavier) than in anything else. Naturally, the scar's present (from schooldays?), but it's less noticeable than usual.
  • The film is a Spanish production (filmed in Switzerland, Italy, and Norway), with a Spanish director, which could explain the script problems  (lost in translation?) and the British acting. Was there a dual production with the simultaneous shooting of Spanish actors?
      A superb example of this is during the scene where Polidori accuses Shelley of cheating in the boat race and challenges him to a duel. Ronan has no lines during this scene and his only actions are brushing Grant's boots and closing his case of polishing brushes. 
      Purely through body language and facial control (bear in mind that this a  medium-length outdoor shot of the 6 characters and Vibert is sitting in the same position throughout), he manages to communicate his character's resignation, disdain, impatience, class-consciousness, and thoughts on the other characters as they speak. This is all done beautifully subtly and draws the viewer into watching him reacting, rather than the other characters acting-- something that can clearly be seen in just about everything he's done. Class stuff.
 

n. Weirdly enough this film won the Goya Best Director award. Acting aside, this is a surprise because of the very disjointed pacing of the movie. I've since heard that the original Spanish (and Euro) release was 128 minutes long, while the version available on US video is 98 minutes. While an extra 30 
minutes of largely bad acting sounds like torture, the characters and plotline may have been better served by a little more development: there's a sudden jump between young and older Byron and the death of his daughter that doesn't really gel. I'm not sure if this hack job took place on the original US/UK release or on the Miramax re-release in the 90s.